Why should I run a sync in DS?

A synchronization makes sure that the settings for your engine account in DS match your settings on the engine.

This is particularly important because the engines do the actual serving of your ads. Running a synchronization (sync for short) from the engine regularly means you’ll have the most up-to-date settings in DS as reflected on the engine.

Import an existing account from a supported engine into DS:

DS pulls in all supported objects and their attributes from the engine account, and creates them in DS.

For keywords: DS pulls in the keywords, creates a unique clickserver URL per keyword, and then replaces the keyword landing page URL on the supported engine with the unique clickserver URL. We track objects at the keyword level, and our clickserver URL allows us to attribute conversion data to the keyword that served the ad. Learn more about landing page and clickserver URLs.

Clear old trafficking errors:

If you run a sync and select the check box next to Fix all trafficking errors. Campaigns, ad groups, ads, and keywords that have never trafficked successfully to the engine will be removed from DoubleClick Search, the sync will clear all older trafficking errors in the DS UI.

Note that the sync is run at the engine account level. Be sure that you understand the error messages you are clearing out for the entire account before running a sync with this option.